Excerpts
Nowhere Place
Loosely tethered to my body, my psyche resists its physical boundaries. Reaches out, trying to escape from this breathing object, me, but it can only go so far. My fingers curl and uncurl, clench and unclench. Spasms of habit trigger points of pain in my wrist and the joints of my hands. Tighten my fists until …
Elegy in Which I Am Awake
I thought it would be another door opened in the body,opened on a street where there is music, anda little rain or snow falling, the sound of someone shoutingin the rain, and the new warmthof bare feet in streetlight, blue field at duskand you …
When I Am Told to “Buck Up” to “Fight the Good Fight” to “Pull Up My Boot Straps & Build Bridges” But I Am Not Ready But I Know Damn Well I Should Be Ready So I Try:
Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penisWhoever despises the penis despises the cuntWhoever despises the cunt despises the life of the child.– Muriel Rukeyser America, fuck you. Let me be specific: My mother’s white America, fuck you. & fuck me, too, because I didn’t makea warrior of myself & disruptmy mother’s comfort by reminding her …
The Last Woman on Earth
The Last Woman on Earth lives in Los Angeles. She’s single and in her thirties, five foot seven, 145 pounds, a Virgo. She is the world’s most famous celebrity. Her talk show has the largest viewership of any tv program, with higher ratings than the Super Bowl and reruns of old Miss Universe pageants. The Last Woman on Earth …
Animal Rhetoric
I. Thesis The week before Graham Bryant killed his girlfriend, he turned in a paper to my first-year composition course, Animals and Society, arguing that dogs should have the same rights as human beings. The first paragraph reads: It is agreed there are basic rights that everybody shares. This is supported by the U.S. Declaration of Independence (Wikipedia). For …
Crossing Borders
When we leave our homes,someone has set them on firethough our eyes are trained to seethis no longer. Instead, this house, we say, is filled with yellow daisies,and its backyard houses the acacia treemother planted years ago. We are given new names, newsounds for our sorrows. We aretold new stories that somehowstill do not belong …
The Great American Novel
Is it conceivable that you could write a novel in which blacks arenot center stage?Bill Moyers to Toni Morrison, March 1990 Imagine you are a boy in the Midwest with a slingshot in your pocket.Your dad’s under the Chevy, and oil like blood slides across sleek cementto stain your white sneakers. Then you’re thirty. Built …
Asteroid Recovery
At the moment of impact, my brother said he felt nothing, he felt himself to be nothing, a curl of smoke from some extinguishment, the last of the species of himself, caught in the very moment of extinction. The cupboards of his clapboard chest shook enough to shatter their earthenware to the floor, and then …
Who will die tonight?
Who will die tonight?Tonightwe hear the voices of machine gunsnot death's footstepsWho guides the bullet to choose who dies?The one who fires the gun?The bullet?Death itself?The one who dies?Or you, hiding we don't know where,or you, who we call by name?Who will rest among us?The sniper?The bullet?The one who stays behind to count the deador …